ONE in five ambulance patients in England waited more than an hour to be handed to A&E teams last week, official figures published today reveal.

The shocking data comes as hospitals hit by years of Tory austerity struggle with bed shortages and a post-Covid lockdown surge in winter viruses.

The total is down from nearly one in four the previous week, partly due to strikes over pay by ambulance workers, but is still well above the 4 per cent seen in the same week last year.

NHS England said hospital capacity “continues to be impacted by delayed discharges,” with 12,313 beds a day taken up by patients who were ready to leave.

“Staff pulled out all the stops to ensure as many patients as possible were able to spend Christmas with loved ones at home,” a spokesperson said.

Among those trusts reporting at least 500 ambulance arrivals last week, the highest proportion of patients waiting more than an hour to be handed over was 54 per cent — at University Hospitals Bristol & Weston.

More than a third of last week’s handovers — 37 per cent — were delayed by at least 30 minutes, about three times higher than the 13 per cent recorded at this point in 2021.

NHS trusts have a target of 95 per cent of all ambulance to hospital transfers to be completed within 30 minutes, with the rest inside an hour. 

The health service is facing unprecedented winter pressure, with an average of 3,746 flu patients in beds each day last week, up a whopping 79 per cent from the previous seven days.

At this point last December there were only 34 people in hospital with flu.